


father & son

by unbreakable_groundriot



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Background Kraglin/Yondu, Canon typical child abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25417450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbreakable_groundriot/pseuds/unbreakable_groundriot
Summary: Bits and pieces in which Yondu tries his best to be a father, role model, and captain for thirty years while harboring his own fears and traumas.
Relationships: Kraglin Obfonteri/Yondu Udonta, Peter Quill & Yondu Udonta
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Cat Stevens' "Father & Son." There's intentional and unintentional emotional/physical abuse of Peter but nothing particularly graphic. This is sort of a companion piece to my other fic "i (don't) get it from my mama" which exploresKraglin and Peter's relationship, but you don't need to read it to get this.

_“Why can’t you ever just listen to me? For once!”_   
_“Ain’t nothing you say worth listening to! I’m your captain and you will do as you’re told!”_   
_“I’m not a child!”_

_The slap against his mouth splits his lip._

_“You act like one, boy. Now do as you’re told and I better not hear another god damned thing about it!”_

_Peter turns thirty-four three days later. He finds a little rocket ship on his bed. It’s Terran made if the stamp of “Made in China” on the bottom of it has anything to say about that. He shoves it into the bottom of the bag he packs for his journey to Morag._

* * *

After his initial three days long screaming fest, Peter had been carried into the medbay for a round of shots, a good delousing, and a full medical checkup. The boy snuffles his way through it all while being distracted by his music box and sticky candy provided by the med crew.

“He’s not like the others.”

Yondu stares at the readout of Peter’s vitals as one of the poor assistants tries to get the little Terran to hold still for his translator implant. “Change it. Ain’t no one needs to know.” He taps the DNA readout. The others he'd delivered had been full-blooded on their mother's sides. This boy... Only half Terran and half something so much worse. “Not a damned word to anyone. The boy is Terran. Call him a Xandarian halfbreed for all I care, but you get rid of this.”

The doctor nods and in moments an archived copy of Terran DNA replaces the truth.

* * *

Yondu celebrates his fourteenth year of freedom the day Peter comes down with scalluscs scales.

Peter cries louder than he has since he’d been picked up six months ago. Yondu can’t blame the little bastard. The scales have to be picked off one by one and they itch something awful. Then he has to bathe in a mix of hot water and salt that stings on contact.

And so, on what is close enough to his thirty-fourth birthday, Captain Yondu Udonta finds himself sitting on the ground next to the tub in the captain’s private bath. His coat is discarded somewhere in the actual bedroom and his sleeves are rolled up high enough to reveal the litany of battle scars and the particularly nasty scars that ring his wrists from too-tight metal cuffs digging into his skin for years.

“Tell me about them snails again.”

Peter pushes around vinyl plastic aquatic vyloo. It crashes into another aquatic vyloo toy with a very dramatic “bang!" from the little Terran.

“They’re these little slimy things. They carry their houses on their backs!”

The boy hasn’t exactly warmed up to Yondu or the rest of the crew but he’s never far behind the captain. He’d bawled his eyes out when one of the med crew had offered to supervise his bath. He’d wanted Yondu. And, well, Yondu had argued with himself, that it would stop Peter’s crying and it would be a break from his crew’s constant complaining. Whatever powerful, Centaurian paternal urges he felt were carefully poured into a bottle, labeled, and stored somewhere deep in his brain along with so much childhood trauma.

“Mmhm. Houses on their backs.” He mindlessly pours water over the boy’s back. You take on one shipment of scalluscs shells and, of course, the only creature on board whose vaccine didn’t take gets the damned scales. At least it weren't one of the actual crew. They'd no doubt bitch and moan about hazard pay.

"Mom used to let me keep some in a jar. You put a stick and some leaves and they feel at home!" He peeks up at Yondu and smiles hesitantly. "Your mom ever let you do that?"  
"Ain't had a mom, kid. Up. Water's cold. I ain't spend all this time just to have your ass freeze to death."

* * *

Peter takes to his chores well enough after some whining. When Yondu’s on the bridge, he’s tasked with running errands that mostly involve delivering snacks and drink packs to the bridge crew. If the captain decides to hold a surprise inspection Peter trots after him and marks off names on a holopad Yondu never actually bothers to check. Yondu often checks on the status of the m-ship fleet. Peter is expected to help the engineers while the captain is busy. He’s usually covered in grease and happy as a pig in shit by the end of it. In the morning he fetches caff or soldier pills for the captain’s breakfast and tucks into his own breakfast while he waits for Yondu to properly wake up. Whatever free time the boy is given is spent either with Kraglin so he can learn to read and write all proper, or listening to his damned music box.

“I wanna learn something useful.”

Yondu doesn’t bother to glance over at the boy. He’s taken over the spot on the bed that is usually occupied by the Eclector’s first mate. Stakar has said it was good to keep your first mate close, but Yondu knew it was his excuse for fucking the Pluvian bastard Martinex. He was just taking Stakar’s advice... Probably for the first time.

“You got your schooling. You got your chores. You’re too damn small to do anything useful.”

Peter grumbled and rolls around the bed before landing gracelessly on his feet. He clomps over in boots a size too large. “I can be useful! I want to be a pirate, not your slave!”

It’s a kneejerk reaction that causes his hand to swing. To his credit, Peter doesn’t start bawling but that’s because he falls to the cold, metal floor with enough force to knock the air out of him. His split lip bleeds sluggishly and there’s already some nasty swelling that will turn into a badly bruised cheek.

Yondu’s made his threats before. He says he’ll eat him or beat him or throw him to the crew, but he’s never hit the little Terran harder than one might swat at a fly, and any crewman who dares think of hurting the Terran gets got.

But he can’t be soft. His regret is carefully bottled and labeled and stored away.

“I better not hear that kind of bullshit outta your mouth again, boy. Ravagers don’t deal in slaves. Don’t you start crying. Get your ass to bed.” He snarls and snaps his teeth.

Peter takes a shaky breath. He stumbles to his feet and quickly retreats to his designated corner of the room. Yondu slides a pair of earbuds on and listens to radio chatter just to drown out the sobs.

Days later Peter's face is healing and he proudly declares that his wounds are from finally standing up to the captain like a real space pirate. Yondu lets him tell his increasingly more dramatic story. 

“Peter. C’mere.” He waggles a shiny piece of candy at the boy. As soon as Peter reaches for it he snatches it away. “Ah ah ah. It’s time you start earning this tooth rot.”

The Terran puffs up his cheeks and turns pink. “I work!”  
Yondu can’t help but grin at the little brat. “If you want to be a Ravager you gotta learn how to steal.” He pats at the pockets of his coat and pants. “You ain’t gettin’ another piece unless you take it.”

Peter learns quickly. He dodges swats like a pro when he’s caught with his hand in places where they don’t belong. The bridge crew finds it to be an amusing enough game that they hide candy on their persons or at their stations. The boy doesn’t always succeed and sometimes, only sometimes, Yondu pretends he doesn’t notice that Peter isn’t just hiding under his coat for safety. Sometimes he pretends he doesn’t feel little hands grabbing handfuls of candy. Only sometimes.

* * *

The little Terran brat picks up the galactic standard language of Xandarian in record time. He speaks with the particular accent that comes with learning the language among undereducated Ravagers from more than a dozen different species. Soon enough he's speaking fully in Xandarian with a few Terran words thrown in when there isn't a direct translation. He takes up a particular gait that is either a side effect of wearing too-big boots or his attempts at copying the captain's larger than life, intimidating stomp. 

"Didn't know you had a kid. You knock up some Xandarian girl? Or'd your man step out on you?"

Yondu narrows his eyes at his latest contact. The bar they chose by mutual agreement is on the right side of sketchy but not so dangerous that one is liable to be shot at random. He slowly tracks his eyes over to the bar where Peter was firmly planted and threatened within an inch of his life. He’s excitedly sipping a fizzy beverage and regaling a few amused young women with a boring story that's only charming because he's nine and gap-toothed. 

"He ain't my kid."  
"Sure as hell talks like you." The Krylorian across from him snorts. "Kinda looks like you too. No need'ta be ashamed. I got a couple brats running around a couple planets."  
"I said he ain't my kid. He's just a brat I can't get rid of."

The boy has an uncanny knack for being inconvenient. He clomps over and grins up at him. He lost a tooth not long ago and looks like a little fool. "Can I have more units for soda?" He stands on his toes to get closer. "I wanna buy them girls a drink too. They're real pretty."

The Krylorian hides a laugh as Yondu drops a handful of credit chits into the boy's hands.   
"Fuck off, kid. I better not see you again 'fore I come get you."  
"Thanks, Captain!"

* * *

Around the time he’s ten Peter is almost tall enough to reach the controls of an m-ship. The entire crew realizes this when one of the m-ships suddenly drops from her mooring and the crashes belly down seconds later.

He’s proud, in a way, that Peter had managed to get the launch codes for that particular ship. Then he’d managed to sneak past a sleeping Yondu and slip all the way to the hangar on a lie that he was being sent for laundry.

He is then immediately infuriated that none of the crew thought to stop the lying little shit. It had been declared that Peter was not to be be unaccompanied outside of the crew cabin wing. No one in the hangar noticed the boy climbing into the ship or if they had noticed they hadn't done a thing. Then he’s pissed that there’s going to be a repair bill and then he’s pissed because the boy has to get his beating in front of the gathered crowd.

The second he drags Peter out of the ship by his shaggy head he feels one of the carefully stored bottles in his mind break. He mentally sweeps up the memory of his master yanking him around by his crest until he bled. He jams the broken pieces into a new bottle and sets it beside the carefully curated shelf reserved just for Peter.

“You trying to steal from me boy?” He digs his nails into the tender skin of Peter’s scalp and gives him a good slap across the face with his other hand. It’s the hit that turns on the waterworks.

He drops the boy and kicks him over and onto his back. Those tiny ribs are so breakable. Those tiny lungs would puncture like nothing.

He doesn’t press down as hard as he should.

“I want to learn 'ta fly!”

Peter manages one of those heaving, wet sobs that only children and very, very drunk men can manage. He’s already nearly purple because he’s crying too hard to breathe and there are tears and snot everywhere.

“I outta throw you out the airlock! No! I outta feed you to real Ravagers!”

The gathered crew jeer and laugh at the spectacle. Of the rotating crew of two hundred-odd Udonta Ravagers, there’s less than a dozen Yondu would trust alone with Peter. The only one he spots in the crowd is Kraglin who’s no doubt run from the bridge to see what all the fuss was.

He kicks Peter onto his belly and kicks him again to force him up and onto his hands and knees. “Kraglin. Take him to the brig.”

  
  


“When are you going to learn that you can’t pull stupid shit like that and expect not to get punished?”

“I hate you.” And yet he curls his skinny arms even more tightly around Yondu’s neck and snuggles his dirty face deeper into the folds of his coat.

He’s too damn tall to be carried anymore. At this rate Yondu expects the Terran to be ten feet tall. He’s still mighty skinny and two days in the brig with only protein mash and water (and he bottles up the emotion that comes with the idea of withholding food and he labels it and the shelf is already so very full) to sustain him aren’t doing his weight any good.

“One day you’ll be thanking me for showing you what’s what. When you have your own crew you’ll think of me every time one of your men pulls some stupid ass stunt.” He palms open the door to his cabin and carefully sets Peter on the edge of his desk to inspect the damage. There’s a cut over his eye that will scar. His lip is split and chapped from the cold deep in the ship’s underbelly. He’s covered in filth and when Yondu gets his shirt off he sees bruises and boot prints. One of his eyes is swollen nearly shut and slowly turning yellow around the edges.

“You smell like shit.”

When that doesn’t get a rise out of the boy he knows he’s really fucked up.

“I had to go in the corner.” Peter bites back a sniffle and speaks real quiet.

“Can’t have you stinking up the room.” He picks him back up and the warm feeling that comes from those little arms around his neck and the feel of soothing his hand over Peter’s back is jammed down into one of the bottles. It’s forced in and the cap is screwed on so tight the damn thing nearly shatters.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter is tall for twelve but stick thin. The little bastard eats and eats so much Yondu had him checked for parasites. Kraglin claimed the same thing happened to young Xandarians and the med crew had assured him it was normal.

Every so often, especially after taking on a group of new recruits, the airlock klaxon blares. There isn’t much to be done if someone gets sucked out into the vacuum. He’ll glance at the recording later and punish anyone at fault and, if warranted, scoop up the frozen body and give it a proper funeral.

“Who is it this time?”

  
It takes him some thirty seconds take to make the nearly three-minute walk to the hangar.

“It was an accident, sir! He just stepped back and was gone!”

Peter had looked so tiny in the arms of the Jovian medic who had taken him, and by proxy Yondu’s coat, away. He’d made the smallest of pleading sounds and stared at Yondu with space blind eyes, but he couldn’t follow.

“So I’m supposed to believe that an airlock just woosh! Opens up? Is that it?”

He smells piss and that’s when he lets the engineer of unknown heritage drop from where he had pinned him using the arrow.

“I swear sir! I swear!”

He catches and holsters his arrow once it’s passed through the idiot’s brain matter. “You and you. Submit your names for commendation.” He jerks his fingers at two engineers still heaving for breath behind their red-eyed masks. “And get to the medbay before you lose something to fucking frostbite.”

It only takes about fifteen seconds for most mammals to go dark in the vacuum. Radiation will sear you like a good steak and, if you’re really lucky, something tiny and fast will whizz right through your skull and kill you quick. Good medical treatment, good antirad meds, and a good decompression unit will keep you alive so long as you’re dragged in within a minute and a half. You’ll be damaged, sure, but you’ll be alive.

  
Peter shouldn’t be alive. He’s so damn small and weak and soft. Hell, the boy shouldn’t even be sitting up yet. Yet he was. One of the med crew plied him with a sticky candy while another wiped away frostbite and burns with a soft cloth as if they were little more than smudges of dirt. His fat tears peel away the layer of cataracts like contacts. He’s shaking and scared, but he’s alive.

“What if the crew asks questions?”

Ravagers don’t press-gang. They don’t really fuck with neutrals like kids or (unarmed) mothers. They certainly don’t fuck with doctors and nurses. Yondu has lost count of how many med crews he’s packed into escape pods and sent on their way while his men destroy the rest of the crew around them.

“Lie. Tell’em it’s Terran biology.” He swipes his hand and this incident is forever erased from the Eclector’s memory banks. “But you tell the boy he nearly died.”

  
Kraglin was always the one to put up a fuss when a certain Terran ended up sleeping in their bed, but for once he'd been the one to suggest it. And so Peter is bundled up on Yondu's side of the bed with the blankets all the way up to his ears. 

The boy braces himself for a slap in the face. He cracks his eyes open ever so slowly when he realizes one isn't coming.   
"That's cold." He touched the new, red button attached to his neck. He presses it without asking what it is, as most children are wont to do. He claws briefly as it springs to life as a red-eyed oxygen mask. 

"It ain't for inside use, son." Yondu hits the button firmly to make sure it's properly attached. "It's for fightin' and if you ever get sucked out again. It'll give you a few minutes so long as you don't get hit by nothing." He brushes a few misplaced curls from his boy's face. "And if that ever happens you call me. I'll find you no matter what."  
Peter smiles a sleepy smile. Affection is rare on the Eclector. "Thanks, Yondu."

He bottles that smile up. One day he'll pop the top and try to relive that smile.

* * *

  
In the beginning, Yondu never allowed Peter to witness death. He'd tell the boy to look away and put his headphones on. If absolutely needed he'd hide the boy's head in his coat and carry him away from the carnage. Whatever paternal thing he tried to push down refused to let Peter experience death so early in his life. He didn't need to be a pouchling scarred by watching children battle to the death let alone a child scarred by watching men die by blaster, blade, or arrow. 

"Are you deaf? Huh? Did that damned music box finally break your eardrums?"

At sixteen Peter is already taller than Yondu by several inches. He's nearing Kraglin's height and has slowly started to grow lean muscles. He turns his head and refuses to look anywhere near Yondu. His jaw is set but there's a slight wobble in his bottom lip. 

"I told you to stay on the ship and wait. You coulda been shot!" He yanks Peter by the front of his Ravager leathers. The boy had only just earned his Flame and Yondu seriously considers taking it back. "Quill! You look at me!"

"I got scared." The boy's voice pitches awkwardly. "It was past the time ya'll was supposed to be back and I got scared, okay?"

He pushes Peter away hard enough to bounce the Terran's head off of the metal-plated wall. His master would have thrown him to a pack of hungry vrellnexians and left him to die if he'd ever admitted fear. 

The Eclector doesn't carry any critters bigger than an orloni and the idea of punishing the boy for being afraid does something to sour his stomach. 

"You... Are a damned fool, son." He pats Peter's cheek harder than necessary but nowhere near as hard as he usually hits him. "You've drawn first blood. Makes you a real man now... but you need to learn to stop and think. Understand?"  
"Yes, sir."

* * *

  
“You finish your schooling, boy?”

Peter pointedly turns his body more toward the wall to avoid the question. He keeps his focus on the dating app he’s swiping through on his datapad.

“Don’t pretend that you can’t hear me.”

“I ain’t asking again.” Yondu pops the aux connector out of the Walkman just to hold the headphones hostage. Years and years ago the cassette had been copied onto the onboard computer system and then eventually found its way onto a proper music player, but Peter had never liked it. It was too small and shiny and the sound transmitted directly into his translator. It didn’t have the same feeling, he'd complained. 

“I’m eighteen! I don’t need schooling anymore!”

“So... You not calculating fuel efficiency right and running your ship dry was just a fluke, boy?” Yondu twirls the end of the headphones carelessly. “Or did you just bullshit your report because you’re a lazy sack of shit? You're lucky all I did was change your launch codes.”

He dodges the first punch Peter throws. He shifts and takes the second one to the shoulder and the last one he catches. His free hand digs into the meat of Peter’s cheeks from the way he grabs his face.

“You fucked up, son. I should have left your ass out in the cold until we was supposed to be in that quadrant. You got enough fat on you to last a few weeks.” He squeezes harder. His nails dig into the remnants of baby fat that stubbornly cling to the Terran. He holds Peter there until his breathing slows and some of the fight leaves him and then pushes. 

Peter stumbles back and lands on his bad with a grunt. The room is nicer than any Ravager worth twice as much as Peter deserves. It’s meant for the first mate and directly connected to the captain’s quarters. Yondu still uses the excuse that Terrans were too tasty to just let wander the crew cabins.

“Acting like a damned kid still. I outta make you sleep in your baby bed since you want to be a baby.” Yondu snorts. “You know you’re damned lucky you even get a-“  
“A chance at schooling. I know. You’ve been harping about it for 10 years!”  
“Now the boy knows math. You know math! This shit is exactly why I am still paying to educate your dumb ass!”

Somewhere inside Yondu hopes that one day Peter will understand. He hopes he’ll understand the threats and the violence. He hopes he’ll understand that every punishment has had meaning from the time he’d forced the boy to clean toilets for a week to the time he’d made him stand on the bridge and recite the Ravager code aloud for an entire shift.

He hopes that he’ll remember the small moments where Yondu isn’t an absolute bastard.

  
“Ten years of getting you educated and you can’t even do simple math! You got what? Couple months left? You’re gonna get a Nova university education and what have I got to show for it? Repair costs! Not a god damn ounce of gratitude in you is there, boy?”

“You chose to spend the money!” Peter jumps to his feet in a failed attempt to tower over the alien before him. Despite the height difference he always seems so small under the scrutiny of those ruby red eyes. “You chose to come get me! I woulda figured it out! You’re bitching and moaning about something you wanted to do! I don’t need you anymore! I’m a grown man! I'm not your son!”

He’s breathing hard. His face is red and his eyes are wet but he won’t cry. It takes more than a few jabs to make Peter cry anymore. 

“Then go.”

Yondu’s heart drops to his stomach. He doesn’t mean it. He regrets it the moment he says it. 

“W-What?”

Yondu drops the headphones onto the bed. He steps back and shoves his hands into his pants pockets. “You’re a grown man. You don’t need my help. You just said it. If you hate it here so much then... go. I ain’t gonna stop you. Hell, you want me to remove you from the register?” He reaches out to try and pluck the dull, dirty flame from Peter’s shoulder.

Peter stumbles back and hits the bed again. It had appeared around his fourteenth birthday after he’d started to complain that the original bed was uncomfortable. Now he slept on a big, fur-covered mattress instead of a shitty, slab of metal pretending to be a bed like all the other Ravagers.

“Go?” He repeats quietly. He’d been given the access code to the Milano nearly four years ago. Yondu claimed Peter had finally paid for it through his cut of jobs they did but anyone who was anyone knew that was a lie. He’d left for a full week after that and when he’d returned Kraglin had been the only thing standing between him and Yondu’s arrow piercing him through the nutsack.

“You ain’t deaf.”

He leaves before he can catch a glimpse at Peter's face.

“Pete can’t even wash his own clothes. He’ll be back in a few days.”

Yondu taps his nails against the armrest of the captain’s chair. In front of him, he tracks the blip that is the Milano as it chugs along toward the nearest port of Gramos. “Can’t wash his clothes. Can’t calculate his fuel needs. Can’t sleep without that damned music box.” He grumbles out. The bridge is empty save Kraglin and one of the night shift navigators. He's half-asleep at his post and Yondu doesn’t care enough to wake him.

“He’s still a kid.” Kraglin shrugs. He leans his bony hip against the side of the chair.  
“He should be grown. He’s past majority.” He taps just a little harder. His nails need cutting but it’s the last thing on his mind. “I’m too damned soft on him.”

“He’s gonna come back. He always does.” Kraglin lowers his voice in what is probably an attempt to be soothing. “He’s mighty attached to you not that he’d admit it.” He sets a thin hand on the back of Yondu’s neck and starts to squeeze out some of the tension.

  
Yondu almost misses when he’d still been the little brat that had taken to hiding under Yondu’s coat. He almost misses when he’d turned into a greasy pre-teen he would lay in the most inconvenient part of the bridge and play one of his damned handheld games with the volume turned up full blast. He missed the way when he’d first hit majority and he’d always trail after Yondu at bars. At eighteen he still snuck into Yondu’s cabin and crashes on the lumpy couch bolted to the floor and blames it on too much drink. 

“He can’t keep expecting me to bail him out when shit hits the fan. He’s gonna get himself arrested and he sure as hell don’t have the credits to pay anybody off.” Peter had never bothered to change the access code to the account Yondu had set up for him. He peeks at the balance every once in a while and maybe, just a few times (every few months), he transfers over some credits to his boy. It was just standard pay, he’d lie to himself. It weren’t an allowance. It weren’t an assurance for himself that Peter would always have money to eat and take care of himself. 

He lets out a massive breath and tips his head forward to give his first mate and mate a little more space to massage shoulders. He’s barely broken forty-four years old yet his body feels so much older.

“We should set up a pool. I give him a week before he comes back with his tail between his legs.”

Six days later he’s got Peter by the hair. He’s covered in his fair share of scrapes and bruises. His mouth is bloody and his nose is leaking equal parts snot and blood. Yondu would hit him again but it’s an unattractive combination of sensations.

“Say it.”  
“Fuck you!”

He yanks until a bit of hair gives way.

“Fuck! I’m sorry! I’m an idiot!”

Peter loses his balance as soon as Yondu lets him go. He falls to his hands and knees and stays there panting.

“Do you have a single brain cell? Or can you only think with your bits?” 

"She tricked me!"

Yondu kicks him hard in the ribs. There were some lessons that could only be taught with a good beating. "You go to Gramos and even look at royalty and you're going to jail, Quill. You went and fucked a duchess! Do you know what I had to do to get you out of that mess? You're alive because of me!" He kicks him again and steadfastly ignores the sound of ribs cracking. "Your first booking and it's for a sex crime! And what stupid ass alias is Star-lord!"

Peter drops his head. "My mom called me that. Why don't you listen?"

Yondu shakes his head. "Your mama's dead, boy. You keep holding on to that shit and you'll never be a man."


	3. Chapter 3

He’s going to have to kill him if the boy can’t come up with something. It’s a kill or be killed situation. If Yondu doesn’t kill him then they both get ripped apart by the crew. It’s a mercy to kill Peter now nice and quick rather than subject him to whatever a crew with nearly thirty years of resentment can think of.

But Peter isn’t coming up with anything. He’s floundering. He’d taught him better than this. He tries to bottle up the feeling of his own failure but the shelves in his mind are nearly collapsing under the weight of all the things he wants to forget and all the things he regrets. 

Yondu turns away from the sight of his boy pinned up against a wall. If he’s gotta kill him... he can’t watch. 

"If you kill me now, you are saying goodbye to the biggest score you have ever seen."

The first bottle in his mind falls and suddenly it's a cascade of things he can never take back and moments he never, ever wants to repeat. It's twenty-six years of trying his damndest to make sure Peter could survive whatever life threw at him in return for a lifetime of hate and resentment. 

He turns and it's twenty-six years of the same, stupid look on Peter's face that says he has no answers but he's going to talk until something sticks. 

It's just one more moment he can keep Peter alive even if it means Peter can never come back home. 

**Author's Note:**

> In place of chickenpox we have scalluscs scales is a completely made up disease based on the scalluscs species shown in one of the comics. They're little snail guys.
> 
> Please excuse any errors or politely point them out. I usually don't edit fics until they're complete. Find me on Tumblr @ unbreakable_groundriot!


End file.
